Show

Sorrentino in Venice: 'I am in favour of the euthanasia law. The cue from Mattarella".

The director opens the Venetian kermesse with a fine film, 'La grazia', starring Servillo and Ferzetti, and launches a message to politics

by Cristina Battocletti

27 August 2025

Al via la 82esima edizione della Mostra del cinema di Venezia

4' min read

Key points

History
Euthanasia
The exercise of doubt
A little Italian comedy

4' min read

'The film seems more composed than its predecessors,' noted a journalist at the press conference addressing Paolo Sorrentino. "So you don't break," replies the director. He jokes, but not too much. He has often been accused of excessive aestheticism at the expense of the message.

And, instead, in The Grace the Oscar winner for The Great Beauty combines both aspects: his directorial skill, his insights into the composition of images, his turns of the camera with an urgent content. The theme is doubt, the responsibility of one person who holds the lives of others in his hands when faced with certain choices. But it also speaks of courage, of the virtues and wickedness of waiting. Great themes that also manage to have depth thanks to the acting of Toni Servillo, in the role of the protagonist, and the excellent Anna Ferzetti, in the role of the daughter.

The Story

Sorrentino tells the story of Mariano De Santis (Servillo), outgoing President of the Republic. An eminent jurist, Neapolitan, widower and Catholic, he has had almost no personal life since his wife's death, except for exchanges with his daughter, Dorotea (Ferzetti). With her, an equally authoritative jurist, he deals mainly with questions of law, including the pardon of two prisoners and the euthanasia law. Dorotea has drafted the text together with a team, but the father never signs it, he waits for a sign to arrive or to finish his own mandate to leave it to someone else to decide.

Euthanasia

"Euthanasia is one of those issues where the choice is particularly difficult, because it is very nuanced. It is not a choice between good and evil, but very often it is between a lesser evil and another kind of evil, between a small good and another kind of punishment. As a viewer, I detest films that go down with a hatchet on such fundamental issues, that clearly want to establish where good and evil lie,' Sorrentino explained.

The film, which opened the 82nd Venice Film Festival, puts a very strong political theme on the table. Dorotea asks her father at one point: "Whose days are ours?" and the Oscar-winning actor's response is along those lines: "The character in the film to his daughter answers that the days are ours, but the problem is that in between this very obvious answer there is the great wall of life that prevents you from easily getting there.

Last year, the theme had appeared with another great film that won the Golden Lion, The Room Next Door, by Pedro Almodóvar. "Cinema no longer has the devastating impact it used to have, it can simply try. I can hope that my film will bring attention to a topic as fundamental as euthanasia,' Sorrentino explains.

Grotesque, surreal, at times comic, but deeply political and anchored in reality, The Grace drew quite a few applause this morning at the press screening.

The exercise of doubt

"It is a film about love for the family, but also for institutions and about a way of doing politics that is always, unfortunately, in my opinion, more outdated, that of exercising responsibility. It is also a film about doubt. Doubt is always seen as a weakness. Instead, I think that the exercise of doubt is one of the qualities, now rarely seen, that a politician should have. The degeneration of doubt was what was once, in the First Republic, called immobilism. But that exercise of doubt, especially on issues involving moral dilemmas, such as granting a pardon or signing a law on euthanasia, is a significant condition. Today, on the other hand, we all too often witness figures, men of power, exercising certainties', which are not supported by ideologies, but by the utility of the moment. And they are often contradicted the next day, he concludes.

Many saw De Santis in the figure of President Mattarella, or Scalfaro for his close relationship with his daughter, or Cossiga for that wait-and-see habit that he had dissolved in the latter part of his term of office to become a 'picketer'.

"The film originated from a news story: when Mattarella had granted a pardon to a man who had killed his wife suffering from Alzheimer's disease. It immediately seemed to me an interesting moral dilemma to tell. The dilemma is a formidable narrative engine more than any other'.

A little Italian comedy

Many other themes dot this film that puts serious issues on the table, but seasons them with comic elements, as in the tradition of Italian comedy. In particular, an irreverent jokester friend, Coco (Milvia Marigliano), Gué Pequeno, the director of 'Vogue' and much more. The Rasta Pope, for example, is perhaps too much. Coco's lines: 'This is a dinner party hypothesis', commenting on a rather frugal meal, will probably remain in common parlance.

And finally, a reflection on grace: 'Grace is much more than beauty. It is an attitude towards life: loving, respectful, strongly exercised by the character, even in the sense of paternity'.

Cristina BattoclettiCaposervizio
- CriBattocletti
- Email
Luogo: Milano
Lingue parlate: inglese, francese
Argomenti: cinema, mitteleuropa, balcani
Premi: Comisso, Latisana, Manzoni, Martoglio
Scheda autore
Trust project